Dennis Avery fails to correct Right Wing Echo Machine

Dennis Avery fails to correct Right Wing Echo Machine

Dennis Avery at the Hudson Institute pushed out a story the other day claiming that: “The atmospheric CO2 levels at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory have declined since 2004.” He’s totally wrong and admitted he was, but has failed to correct this mistruth and now the story is bouncing around the right-wing media echo chamber.

Here’s the graph from the Mauna Loa observatory:

First off, how could Avery, who claims to be an “environmental economist” get this so wrong?

I’m not a scientist or an economist, but it seems to me that this graph is pretty darn clear. This is far from an innocent mistake and Avery is doing nothing to stop the echo machine. If Avery had any sense of ethics he would make sure that every single outlet who carried this blatant misrepresentation corrected him on the record.

Previous Comments

It’s even clearer, when we look at the whole graph since March 1958. Can anyone see a downward trend? [Excepting mascereye, geologist, paul s, phlogiston & etc.] The truth is of course, that not only is the trend upwards, but the trend is also increasing with time. So not only did Avery get it wrong, it was even worse than that!

Of course the concentration of CO2 parts per million is going up; to even offhandedly imply that I think otherwise is dishonest of you climate criminal.

But how about other aspects of climate change? Western Canada’s surface temperature has increased by over 2 degrees the last several decades. But a recent NOAA study, “Reanalysis of Historical Climate for Key Atmospheric Features”, suggests much of the warming in Western Canada is natural.

Here also is a comment from the “Reanalysis of Historical Climate for Key Atmospheric Features” concerning drought in North America (Page 86):

“It is natural to ask whether the plethora of recent severe drought conditions identified by NCDC is associated with human effects, particularly greenhouse gas emissions. Figure 3.20 shows that the United States area covered by recent droughts (lower panel) is similar to that which prevailed in the 1950s, and also similar to conditions before the reanalysis period such as the “Dust Bowl” era of the 1930s (Box 3.3). Paleoreconstructions of drought conditions for the western United States (upper panel) indicate that recent droughts are considerably less severe and protracted than those that have been estimated for time periods in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from tree ring data (Cook et al., 2004). Hence, from a frequency/ area standpoint, droughts in the recent decades are not particularly outstanding.”

It appears that he based his claim of CO2 “levels” dropping on a WUWT post about the RATE of CO2 increase slowing since 2004. That’s just sloppy. Besides, even the claim about the rate dropping is laughable, which is obvious if you look at the author’s handy work.

Wrong. Global temperature trends have been upwards over the last 11 years, if you smooth out 1998’s extreme anomalous warmth (caused by the very strong El Nino of that year).

Recently (i.e. over the past two years), temperatures have been slightly lower, due mostly to a prominent La Nina. Your monthly temperature anomaly citation may actually just show how intense the La Nina is getting or whether the North Pacific has experienced a change in pressure patterns. It does nothing to prove or disprove the existence of AGW.

By smoothing out single-year anomalies (which is what climatologists do in order to identify decadal trends), the past decade or so has been the warmest on record. This is irrefutable. It is extremely likely that the past decade has been the warmest over the past 2000 years, and fairly likely that the past decade is the warmest over the last several millennia when compared to ice core records and other proxy sources.

Where do you want to go from. Jim? 1981 when the Global temperature anomaly was less than it was in March 2009? Or 1983? In fact the temperature of the lower Troposphere has risen less than 0.3 of a degree C since 1979. Wow, that’s an unprecedented 0.1C/decade!

And why so coy about Hurricanes? Or floods, or droughts?. The facts of the matter are that the frequency and severity of any of these “extreme” weather events is not at all unusual.

Good grief, you are shown that you can’t play soccer so you switch to a hockey rink. You are just a denier troll with nothing honest to say.

Why not respond to peoples’ criticisms of your shoddy work rather than switching to a competely different topic? Of course there is no honest crtiscm of posts on places like CO2 science (so you can’t cut and paste honest critiscm), I forgot that.

Read my post again, Jim. I started by specifically addressing your statement about Global temperatures. It was you who chose not to reply directly, rather you had a hissy fit that I also had the temerity to point out some more “Inconvenient Truths” for the AGW Alarmist position.

You don’t even know who you are talking to. How stupid can you get? The reason I don”t respond to the majority of your cites is because I have found them to actually say the opposite of what you claim they are saying. Is that on purpose or are you just too lazy to actually read them? I doubt if you would understand them even if you did read them.

You are just a dishonest troll whose comments are so ridiculous that they should not be posted here. You are just an echo chamber for the denier sites such as climatefraudit, wattswrongwithwatt, CO2science, icecap etc.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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